Help! Dropped engagement ring into 2024 CX-5 Defroster vent

[sm1ke]

First off OP, be glad you know generally where it is! I guarantee you know someone who wishes they knew where their original engagement ring or wedding band is. If you didn't before, well... you know me now.

Looking at the diagram cz5gt posted, it looks like the large piece #1 is where it might be contained. The good part is that likely narrows it down. The bad part is the shape of that piece probably doesn't lend itself to being able to suck it out of any other opening in the system. Again, be glad it's in there and not in the ocean or a storm drain or something.

I lost my wedding band. To the ocean. On my honeymoon! LOL

Thankfully it was just a plain white gold band, but still.

 

[cz5gt]

I once dropped my car key in an elevator shaft
"dumpster" diving style I managed to get (blocking the elevator manually and forcing door open ground floor) it but it was terrible and risky experience. Never again.

 

[murky]

That was Sunday, it must be out by now. Let's see it.

 

[HyFlyer]

I've got my popcorn out, waiting for chapter two .... "How we recovered the ring" haha

 

[bmninada]

Question - where are you sleeping these days?

 

[murky]

Funny, I read this thread, and even posted in it before. Today I opened it based on the title thinking it would be about some type of retaining ring that fell in during disassembly. Like the ring was meant to maintain engagement between two parts.

 

[Charmer383]

Any update?

 

[Silly Wabbit]

Just a theory: OP is stalling to buy time

 

[stayz]

UPDATES: The ring has been retrieved!!!! Thank you all for your advice, we really appreciate it

So we did almost all the things you all mentioned including:

1. Getting a endoscope camera and looking into all the vents
2. Taking out the air filter and checking inside
3. Cycling the air from defrost to front blow to low blow repeatedly ( I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS i'll talk more about this in the NOTE section )
4. Taking apart the bottom portion of the car to see if it fell on the floor.

NOTE: This actually caused the ring to drop from the defroster deeper into the vents, so for all those reading the thread in the future - If you know that you dropped your ring into the defroster and your defroster was OFF at the time, DO NOT turn it on if you have a heavy ring. Chances are that it's still there and will stay there. It would have been a lot easier and maybe even possible for us to pop open the front speaker and use a hook or something to retrieve it, but I turned on the defroster and then heard a solid object falling behind the dashboard before i did that

Here's what happened next for those interested:

After we heard the ring fall, and watching a couple of dashboard disassembly videos, we knew that we probably wouldn't be able to do it ourselves. We aren't the handiest, so we decided to call up mazda. Save yourselves time and don't go here lol, especially if you're from NYC. They held my car for two days only to tell me after that they couldn't work on it for 2 more weeks. Spent like 100$ on ubers back and forth. They estimated 190 for a car inspection, and then 950 for dashboard removal.

So I get the car back after 2 days, make some sharp turns and go on bumpy roads to confirm that the mazda guys didn't take our ring, and we happen to hear it drop a little more in the center of the dashboard. We were like nice, at least it's still there. Called up a couple of local auto shops in my area, landed on H & B Auto Shop in Brooklyn with a guy named Benny who quoted me 700$ for dashboard removal and it would only take 2 days max.

I bring the car in during the afternoon wednesday, thursday afternoon I get a call from Benny saying that he found it! It was located in the evaporator, so taking apart the dashboard was a must since it was in that spot.

Anyways, lesson learned - we won't be taking off our rings anytime soon. Or putting anything small and valuable on the dashboard for that matter.

$800 well spent, ring retrieved, happy wife, happy life

 

[stayz]

Question - where are you sleeping these days?

dude, she would tell me "if you don't get my ring back, you're dead" at least 10 times a day

 

[hsdejong]

So my wife left her ring on the dash

she would tell me "if you don't get my ring back, you're dead" at least 10 times a day

She held you responsible?

 

[hooked]

Hooray! I’m curious if you were able to see the ring with the endoscope.

 

[N7turbo]

3. Cycling the air from defrost to front blow to low blow repeatedly ( I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS i'll talk more about this in the NOTE section )
4. Taking apart the bottom portion of the car to see if it fell on the floor.

NOTE: This actually caused the ring to drop from the defroster deeper into the vents, so for all those reading the thread in the future - If you know that you dropped your ring into the defroster and your defroster was OFF at the time, DO NOT turn it on if you have a heavy ring. Chances are that it's still there and will stay there. It would have been a lot easier and maybe even possible for us to pop open the front speaker and use a hook or something to retrieve it, but I turned on the defroster and then heard a solid object falling behind the dashboard before i did that

I wonder why anyone thought this would be a good idea in the first place. You likely aren't going to levitate a ring with less than a leaf blower, let alone the weak blower in a car.

 

[hooked]

Coulda been worse.